Exploring early childhood music experts’ practices to guide generalist pre-service teacher education in Southern Africa

Abstract

A fundamental aspect in early childhood teacher education is that pre-service teachers acquire pedagogical knowledge on how to facilitate music. Research indicates that music education plays a crucial role in facilitating child development. This study aimed to explore the musical and pedagogical practices of expert music educators in early childhood settings of Southern Africa. This provided a guide to shape the development of new strategies for tertiary education of pre-service ECE teachers in Southern Africa. Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory was the lens to enable a deeper understanding of the research topic. This multiple case study within a qualitative research paradigm included two groups of participants. The first group involved eight expert music educators from Southern Africa with specialised tertiary qualifications in music education and at least eight years of experience teaching young children in ECE settings, as well as having presented music education workshops to other teachers. Two educators were selected for each Southern African country represented in this study, including Botswana, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. The second group of participants was four ECE experts from professional music societies in Southern Africa. Data collection took place in two phases; firstly, in-depth semi-structured interviews with expert ECE music educators via Zoom or Skype, and secondly, online lesson observations of four professional music societies (Orff Schulwerk, Kodály, Kindermusik, and Junior Jive). Key findings include that facilitation of music in an early childhood context should offer playful pedagogies, allow social interaction and collaboration between learners, and develop musicianship in young children to aid school readiness. Moreover, the study indicates that teacher education programmes should prioritise pedagogical content knowledge and facilitation, offer apprenticeship in a mentorship programme, provide research opportunities and access to online resources, as well as prospects for collaboration and networking with music educators and professional music education societies. The study culminates in a teacher education programme for music in the early childhood classroom in Southern Africa as informed by the results from the investigation. The study recommendations are two-fold; firstly, there are suggestions for facilitating music in the early childhood classroom, and secondly, a framework to guide pre-service ECE teacher education programmes in music education. The study confirms Vygotsky’s sociocultural learning theory as an appropriate cultural context endorsing social interaction.